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38 comments on National Liquid Fuels Vulnerability Assessment

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Big Gav on April 9, 2008 - 5:15am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

From today's Australian :

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23494594-5005200,00.h...

THE Rudd Government's embrace of renewable energy is expected to usher in a second wave of investment in wind power, despite a two-year waiting list for turbines.

Paul Curnow, a partner at law firm Baker & McKenzie, said the outlook was "very good", with investors who had been lying in wait since 2004 now ready to "bring all that potential to market".

The Government's national scheme will include a legislated target of 45,000 gigawatt hours of renewables-based electricity in 2020. This will ensure 20 per cent of Australia's electricity supply will be obtained from renewables by 2020.

The Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 currently requires the generation of 9500 gigawatt hours of extra renewable electricity per year by 2010 -- enough power to meet the residential electricity needs of 4million people.

There are about 40 wind farms in Australia, and at a clean energy conference in Sydney later this month, delegates will be told by AGL Energy Ltd carbon and government affairs national manager Tim Nelson that this could turn into 250 over the next decade.

Mr Curnow expects the number to jump when the commonwealth and the states flesh out details relating to the target later this year.

He noted that when the Howard government introduced its Mandatory Renewable Energy Target in 2001, there was a burst of investment which dried up when it was clear the government was not going to extend the scheme.

"All the wind farms you see in Australia came out of that," Mr Curnow said.

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Boof on April 9, 2008 - 6:25am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I guess that answers the question about Rudd and renewables. Since there are nearly 9000 hours in a year that 2020 target approaches 5 Gw continuous average, maybe 10% of all current installed capacity. I surmise that since CSP, geothermal and solar towers can't be sure of their contribution to the 20% target (circa 10 Gw) that investment remains more of a gamble than windpower.

While we're still smitten with Rudd remember so far it's all talk and that the renewables surge is yet to happen. At least Howard had a cycle commuting minister in Tony Abbott. I note on telly tonight that Premier Lennon reneged on his promise to get a hybrid and is now cruising the boulevards in a shiny new Statesman. I have this horrible feeling we are going to be disappointed in the new 'green' ALP.

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Big Gav on April 9, 2008 - 8:42am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I agree most investment seems likely to go into wind initially if the news MRET target is put in place.

Geothermal will have to wait until GeoDynamics proves it is possible - which could be a while.

Hopefully they wake up to the potential of large scale CSP (obviously there are 4 or so plants already underway, but only one reasonably large one).

I'm not smitten by Rudd - just cautiously hopeful. The Tassie ALP is hopeless.

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DaveMart on April 11, 2008 - 7:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

From those figures it seems that Australia needs around 25GW of electricity on average per hour.

I am not familiar with the figures for Australia but using UK figures as a proxy around 40% of electricity use goes to hot-water heating, where that is used instead of gas.
I believe that residential solar thermal is reckoned to be able to save around 15% of that.
In Australia it would do still better, as collectors on the roofs would also reduce the heat load into the house, economising on air-conditioning needs.
Air source heat pumps would greatly reduce heating and cooling needs for the rest.

So out of the needed 5GW per average hour supply of renewables needed residential solar thermal should be able to take care of at least 1.5GW, with additional contributions from heat pumps.

And that is before you start building any wind turbines and so forth, and should be considerably cheaper.

20% of electricity from renewables sounds not only achievable but fairly modest and cost-effective.

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